Victorian Election, Northern Metro Region
If you're voting for the upper house in the northern region you'll be either writing a 1 above the line, of numbering at least 5 boxes below the line. There are 8 groups: I won't bore you with explaining who the Liberal, Democrats, Australian Labor Party, or Australian Greens are; however the other groups are:
[DLP] Democratic Labor Party - the Roman Catholic rump of the Labor party that split off during the 1950s anti-Communist witch hunts. Channelling the ghosts of Archbishop Mannix and Bob Santamaria, voting for these guys is like voting for Cardinal Pell to be the Pope after Ratzinger shuffles off the mortal coil.
[PPP] People Power - a centrist party of volunteers standing for the first time, with an interesting set of policies and candidates, most of whom appear not to be party apparatchiks. It was started in 2000 by Vern Hughes and the editor of Crikey!, Stephen Mayne, and was reformed for this election. They admire some Greens candidates but accuse them of being "hard left", hence their preferences favour the DLP (!) before the Greens, and Family First before the ALP...
[FFP] Family First - Christian conservative party with strong associations with the Assemblies of God, but unlike other parties with similar views (such as the Christian Democratic Party aka the Fred Nile party) are stressing their emphasis on "family values" and presenting as a secular political party. The party organisation has had some help from former Liberal party members in organising itself, hence catching a number of other parties by surprise in the 2004 Federal Election. Although fielding candidates in every district and region, the only spokesman talking to anyone is Cameron Eastman.
[KAL] Independents - in the Northern region classified as Group D, Joseph Kaliniy's group. I couldn't find any particular information about their position in this election. Kaliniy stood as an independent for the Republican Convention as a monarchist, probably on the grounds of having innate distrust of republics, having emigrated from a repressive dictatorship of some kind...
Preference flows:
DLP: -> KAL -> PPP -> FFP -> ALP* -> LIB -> DEM -> GRN
* only 1 candidate, Nazih Elasmar, is placed ahead of the Liberals - all the rest are preferenced after the Libs.
DEM: -> PPP -> GRN -> ALP/LIB* -> KAL -> DLP -> FFP
* Democrats have two voting tickets, one with puts the ALP first, the other the Liberals first - so splitting their group ticket precisely half each way (after People Power and the Greens, that is).
PPP: -> DEM -> KAL -> DLP -> GRN -> LIB -> FFP -> ALP*
* ALP preferences go up the ticket, i.e. bottom to top.
KAL: -> DLP -> PPP -> DEM -> GRN -> LIB -> ALP -> FFP
GRN: -> DEM -> KAL -> PPP -> ALP -> LIB -> DLP -> FFP
ALP: -> PPP -> DLP -> DEM -> GRN -> FFP -> LIB -> KAL
LIB: -> FFP -> DLP -> DEM -> PPP -> KAL -> ALP -> GRN
FFP: -> DLP -> LIB -> KAL -> PPP -> ALP -> DEM -> GRN
So the Democratic Labor Party, the Liberals, and Family First are fellow travellers in putting the Greens last, yet Labor have apparently claimed the Greens are preferencing Liberals ahead of Labor, when they are not. The group ticket for the Greens is almost an inversion of Family First's. It seems some interesting reports of dirty tricks campaigns are in the air, and of course the Executive Brethren have finally played their hand in this morning's Age.
In the local district of Melbourne, I predict Richard di Natale will unseat the current sitting ALP minister Bronwyn Pike.